What do young women care about? What are their hopes, worries, and ambitions? Have they heard of feminism, and do they relate to it?

These are just a few of the questions journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz and photographer Emma Bee Bernstein set out to answer in Girldrive. In October 2007, Aronowitz and Bernstein took a cross-country road trip to meet with the 127 women profiled in this book, ranging from well-known feminists like Kathleen Hanna, Laura Kipnis, Erica Jong, and Michele Wallace, to women who don’t relate to feminism at all. The result of these interviews, Girldrive is a regional chronicle of the struggles, concerns, successes, and insights of young women who are grapplingjust as hard as their mothers and grandmothers didto find, define, and fight for gender equity.

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What do young women care about? What are their hopes, worries, and ambitions? Have they heard of feminism, and do they relate to it?

These are just a few of the questions journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz and photographer Emma Bee Bernstein set out to answer in Girldrive. In October 2007, Aronowitz and Bernstein took a cross-country road trip to meet with the 127 women profiled in this book, ranging from well-known feminists like Kathleen Hanna, Laura Kipnis, Erica Jong, and Michele Wallace, to women who don’t relate to feminism at all. The result of these interviews, Girldrive is a regional chronicle of the struggles, concerns, successes, and insights of young women who are grapplingjust as hard as their mothers and grandmothers didto find, define, and fight for gender equity.

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Starred review from October 5, 2009Embarking on a road trip across the U.S. to engage with contemporary women, writer Aronowitz and the late artist Bernstein (1985-2008) assert that "all we want is conversation." Through 127 casual discussions with female college students, burlesque dancers, musicians, nuns-in-training, single mothers, abortion clinic staffers and others, the authors privilege the unique experiences and perspectives of both established activists and women who hesitate to identify with any notion of feminism. Coupling luminous, enigmatic photography with insightful diary entries, the pair contribute sharp commentary on modern womanhood and gender issues. The project is most striking when exploring the personal stories of interview subjects, but the authors' ambitious scope makes some encounters feel repetitive. Clearly a work of passion for Bernstein (who committed suicide before the book's publication) and Aronowitz both, the authors share of themselves generously, imprinting the "open-ended, fluid conversation" with their voices, feelings and personalities.